assemblage

[ uh-sem-blij; French a-sahn-blazh ]

noun

1. a group of persons or things gathered or collected; an assembly; collection; aggregate.
2. the act of assembling; state of being assembled.
3. Fine Arts.
   1. a sculptural technique of organizing or composing into a unified whole a group of unrelated and often fragmentary or discarded objects.
   2. a work of art produced by this technique. Compare collage, found object, ready-made ( def 4 ).
4. Archaeology. the aggregate of artifacts and other remains found on a site, considered as material evidence in support of a theory concerning the culture or cultures inhabiting it.

assemblage

/ əˈsɛmblɪdʒ /

noun

1. a number of things or persons assembled together; collection; assembly
2. a list of dishes served at a meal or the dishes themselves
3. the act or process of assembling or the state of being assembled
4. ˌæsəmˈblɑːʒ a three-dimensional work of art that combines various objects into an integrated whole

assemblage

/ ə-sĕm′blĭj /

1. A collection of artifacts from a single datable component of an archaeological site. Depending on the site and culture, an assemblage may be associated with a single limited activity, as with stone tools found at a butchering site, or may reflect a broad range of cultural life, as with artifacts that are found in a communal living site.

Other Words From

• reas·semblage noun
• subas·semblage noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of assemblage¹

From French, dating back to 1695–1705; assemble, -age

Example Sentences

They are an assemblage of straps and buckles and padding that’s secured to the back seat by the car’s existing seatbelts or a latch buckle, and they’re designed to hold a child in place so they won’t be tossed around in the event of a crash.

From Freakonomics

Domesticity takes many guises in Daniel Wickerham and Malcolm Lomax’s towering assemblages, which rely heavily on photographic images but also include 3-D objects.

From Washington Post

The assemblages allude to toys and games and appear harmless, yet the local artist has named the show “The Dangerous Playground.”

From Washington Post

It’s part of the Make Amazon Pay campaign, an assemblage of organized labor, human rights organizations, environmentalists and other groups that are demanding changes at the Seattle-based company in a program of protests and online press conferences.

From Fortune

He can also be described as an assemblage of atoms that exhibits complex, life-like behavior.

From Nautilus

“The street pole that tells a wonderful story,” Maria told the assemblage.

From The Daily Beast

The hallucination is visually incoherent, either a rough approximation of text or a random assemblage of letters.

From The Daily Beast

Of course, the result is a wonderful modernist assemblage that has an almost Surrealist flavor.

From The Daily Beast

His art collides gay culture, outsider art, religious camp and sophisticated assemblage and installation.

From The Daily Beast

She saunters down the castle steps and stares out at a gloomy assemblage of soldiers.

From The Daily Beast

At the confluence of these two rivers there was the finest assemblage of Savages that I have yet seen.

From Project Gutenberg

A vast assemblage of countless thousands of women, and boys, and wan and starving men, gathered in the streets of Paris.

From Project Gutenberg

Seldom has war brought together such a motley assemblage of races as gathered on the Ridge during the siege of Delhi.

From Project Gutenberg

Castile enjoyed the supremacy in that great assemblage of races and languages.

From Project Gutenberg

And, from the above assemblage of facts, it appears evident that the said Diard killed himself voluntarily and by his own hand.

From Project Gutenberg